"Director Cuts" that just got it wrong.

TheIrishGrover

I'm sitting here listening to the music from Cinema Paradiso and it got me thinking of Director's Cuts that (IMHO) were not as good as the original.

In Cinema Paradiso in the Director's Cut (Seriously, a spoiler, changed the film for me so don't read if you don't really want to know)

After the funeral and the wonderful collage scene the adult Toto, now a director, sees a girl that reminds him of the love of his life as a kid, Elena. He finds out that the girl is her daughter and he tracks down Elena who is married and they have a bit of a fling. It actually left me with a bit of a bad taste in my mouth and went against the nostalgic tone of the rest of the film

Are there any films where ye prefer the original cuts over the director/extended/alternate cuts? And, to avoid this just becoming a list, why do ye prefer the originals?

I can see a huge amount of "Lord of The Rings" movies for pacing, and that's a valid point but I prefer the extendeds. Anyway.

johnny_ultimate

Donnie Darko - the director's cut being the first conclusive proof that Richard Kelly fluked his way to a good film, and that the initial financial restrictions were actually hugely beneficial to the original version. The drastically misjudged music cues, the pointless book inserts, and just a general sense that any inch of mystery and artistry was lucky to escape alive from this abomination of a reinterpretation. Further efforts from the director happily proved that full creative control is one luxury not flattering to Mr Kelly.

krudler

I prefer the version of Blade Runner with the voiceover myself, so whichever cut has the v/o but the extra footage as well, there's so many cuts of it you wouldnt know.

salacious crumb

Not a director's cut, but as a fan of True Romance since it was in the cinema, I recently watched the alternative ending. Dear sweet Jesus, NO!!

delbertgrady

Peter Weir removed footage from his director's cut of the magnficent Picnic at Hanging Rock, the goon! He felt the scenes were surplus to requirement, but for anyone familiar with the original released cut of the film, you really miss them when they're gone.
Steven Spielberg's woefully ill-judged, self-imposed, post-9/11, "conscience of America" approach in digitally altering ET: The Extra-Terrestrial for the 20th Anniversary re-release, and replacing the agents' guns with walkie-talkies was truly appalling. He subsequently more or less acknowledged that he'd screwed up, and said the original 1982 version should be the one that people watch.

Sad Professor

Director's cut is a massively misused term and Donnie Darko is a good example of it backfiring on the director. What Kelly released on DVD was actually an alternate/extended cut created well after the fact. While Kelly was contractually obliged to deliver a film of a certain length, I've never heard it suggested that the studio re-cut the film without his consent (which is the only time the term "director's cut" is truly earned).

Kelly felt the finished result was compromised, but so does every director. I mean Harvey Weinstein's fingerprints are all over Gangs of New York, but Scorsese will never do a "director's cut" because the film was never taken away from him and he accepts the compromises caused by such commercial pressures as being part of the filmmaking process.

But in fariness to Richard Kelly, George Lucas, Michael Mann and Ridley Scott (among others), the temptation to return to a previous work and make tweaks must enormous, especially when the studio is begging you to do it.

krudler

delbertgrady wrote: »

Peter Weir removed footage from his director's cut of the magnficent Picnic at Hanging Rock, the goon! He felt the scenes were surplus to requirement, but for anyone familiar with the original released cut of the film, you really miss them when they're gone.
Steven Spielberg's woefully ill-judged, self-imposed, post-9/11, "conscience of America" approach in digitally altering ET: The Extra-Terrestrial for the 20th Anniversary re-release, in replacing the agents' guns with walkie-talkies. Truly appalling. He subsequently more or less acknowledged that he'd screwed up, and said the original 1982 version should be the one that people watch.

E.T. is a good example, that horrid 2002 re-release should be forgotten about.

Topper Harley

I never saw the original version of Apocalypse Now, just the Redux version which has 49 minutes of added footage.

I only found out which scenes were reinserted after seeing it. Most of the scenes were ones that I think were worth putting back in but there was one scene that seemed to last forever where Martin Sheen chats about the history of the war and the French involvement with a French family on a plantation in Cambodia.

Maybe I'd appreciate it more if I watched it again but I just felt it was very long winded and could have been done without.

Oh, and also the whole 'Han shot first' thing in Star Wars. Again, I only saw Lucas' updated version but I was already aware of the changes Lucas made and just pretended they didn't happen.

Skerries

salacious crumb wrote: »

Not a director's cut, but as a fan of True Romance since it was in the cinema, I recently watched the alternative ending. Dear sweet Jesus, NO!!

oh god yeah! that alternate ending was the way that Tarantino wanted it to end so Scott filmed it just to shut him up and Tarantino admitted that Scott's version was way better for the film that he had shot which was at heart a love film

TheIrishGrover

krudler wrote: »

E.T. is a good example, that horrid 2002 re-release should be forgotten about.

As far as I know it was. Apparently the Blu-Ray has all the additions (Including the CGI-face and walkie-talkies) have been removed. (Don't know about the "you are not going out dressed as a terrorist" line is left in)

Sad Professor

The Blu-ray is the 1982 theatrical cut. Spielberg has totally disowned the 2002 SE version.

Although I suspect Universal was more to blame for that travesty than Spielberg. It was their idea. At the time he said he approved of it provided the theatrical cut was included on the DVD. Which it was until it went OOP and was replaced with a 1-disc version with only the "walkie talkie" cut.

krudler

TheIrishGrover wrote: »

As far as I know it was. Apparently the Blu-Ray has all the additions (Including the CGI-face and walkie-talkies) have been removed. (Don't know about the "you are not going out dressed as a terrorist" line is left in)

I've only ever seen the full 2002 version once that was in the cinema release (saw it and Blade 2 on the same night, what a bizarre double bill :pac: ) and caught a few mins of it years later on tv, I bought the 3 disc dvd purely for the original cut, still have it too must get the blu-ray at some point.

jaykhunter

Terminator 2's director's/extended/skynet cut had some interesting but superfluous material - it made the film too long and slowed the pacing. It didn't ruin the film but it did make it a worse film. Although it would've been cool to have Kyle Reese in the theatrical version.

krudler

jaykhunter wrote: »

Terminator 2's director's/extended/skynet cut had some interesting but superfluous material - it made the film too long and slowed the pacing. It didn't ruin the film but it did make it a worse film. Although it would've been cool to have Kyle Reese in the theatrical version.

I like the Reese flashback/dream scene, some of it is a bit longwinded though, the extra scenes with Miles Dyson and his family and that, they should have left the T-1000 malfunctioning after reassembling in the factory in the theatrical cut though, there's elements of it alright but not the bit where you see him absorb the floor panels or get stuck on the railing.

Aliens is an interesting one, the sentry gun scene is great and showing Ripley had a daughter adds to the whole Newt storyline, surrogate mother and all that stuff, I prefered when we didn't see LV426 before the marines get there though.

on the flipside of turning poor theatrical versions into superior director's cuts then Kingdom of Heaven is a great example,the cinema release was an absolute mess, the full lenght one is fantastic.

Skerries

again not a director's cut but the Alan Smithee version of Dune was absolutely dire compared to his version, scenes that were intentionally left out by Lynch put back in and good scenes removed

Timmyctc

I much preferred the directors cut of 28 days later, which was basically just an alternate ending, to the released version. Much more dark and realistic, more in line with the rest of the film imo.

karma_

krudler wrote: »

Aliens is an interesting one, the sentry gun scene is great and showing Ripley had a daughter adds to the whole Newt storyline, surrogate mother and all that stuff, I prefered when we didn't see LV426 before the marines get there though.

I remember when the VHS was released (rental) of Aliens back in the day it had a partial scene of the sentry gun sequence. I wonder was that a different cut again?

Gee Bag

Apocalypse Now Redux,

Some of the extra scenes were ok, but over all I thought it sprawled all over the place

LuckyLloyd

Topper Harley wrote: »

I never saw the original version of Apocalypse Now, just the Redux version which has 49 minutes of added footage.

I only found out which scenes were reinserted after seeing it. Most of the scenes were ones that I think were worth putting back in but there was one scene that seemed to last forever where Martin Sheen chats about the history of the war and the French involvement with a French family on a plantation in Cambodia.

Maybe I'd appreciate it more if I watched it again but I just felt it was very long winded and could have been done without.

Oh, and also the whole 'Han shot first' thing in Star Wars
. Again, I only saw Lucas' updated version but I was already aware of the changes Lucas made and just pretended they didn't happen.

From a pure entertainment perspective, it may not be the most riveting scene of all time but it was rather important. At this point, it is fairly well understood that the US approach to Vietnam was misguided and illjudged - i.e. they thought they were preventing the spread of a communist bloc as per the dominoe theory. However, the struggle between north and south was an extension of the uprising against the colonisation by the French. Vietnam had been struggling for independence far too long to become a Chinese / Russian puppet, and the US involvement was viewed by them as more western imperialism. However, when the film was made that clear headed analysis of the war wasn't universally accepted.

I'd accept that Coppola would have ideally found a more flowing way to insert the content of the conversation into the film, but it's nonetheless a very interesting scene (and it looks wonderful).

LuckyLloyd

What do people think of Magnolia? As much as I love it, I wonder how successful it could have been if it was reigned in. PTA's final cut could have been released on DVD thereafter, but it's probably a rare example where a studio could have been justified in getting the scissors out.

Skerries

karma_ wrote: »

I remember when the VHS was released (rental) of Aliens back in the day it had a partial scene of the sentry gun sequence. I wonder was that a different cut again?

are you sure it wasn't the special edition as I have that on VHS?

Bipolar Joe

As regards to "Han shot first," Han was the ONLY one who shot originally! Greedo was dead before he got a chance to pull the trigger.

Sleepy

I think the OP has the best example here. Cinema Paradiso is one of my "all time top 5", I love that movie. Hate the directors cut, the

shag in the car

utterly cheapens what until then, is a perfect slice of personal nostalgia.

CastorTroy

A Director's Cut I'm not a fan of is The Warriors. All they really did was insert comic panels. Just seemed pointless. I know his reasoning but I don't think they were needed.
As a fan of the original I would've just liked the director's cut to add the scenes that were cut out and have appeared in other cuts of the movie.

karma_

Skerries wrote: »

are you sure it wasn't the special edition as I have that on VHS?

I can't be totally sure about this, but it would have been way before the Special Edition came out, and I only remembered about it when I seen that part on watching it.

Topper Harley

LuckyLloyd wrote: »

From a pure entertainment perspective, it may not be the most riveting scene of all time but it was rather important. At this point, it is fairly well understood that the US approach to Vietnam was misguided and illjudged - i.e. they thought they were preventing the spread of a communist bloc as per the dominoe theory. However, the struggle between north and south was an extension of the uprising against the colonisation by the French. Vietnam had been struggling for independence far too long to become a Chinese / Russian puppet, and the US involvement was viewed by them as more western imperialism. However, when the film was made that clear headed analysis of the war wasn't universally accepted.

I'd accept that Coppola would have ideally found a more flowing way to insert the content of the conversation into the film, but it's nonetheless a very interesting scene (and it looks wonderful).

Thanks to this thread and my renewed interest in Apocalypse Now, I did a little research on wiki and found that (allegedly) Coppola originally wasn't happy with that scene from a technical viewpoint and was only happy after it could be digitally enhanced by the time the Redux version was being cut.

Now I really want to see it again.